"An epilogue I asked! but not one word
Our bard would write! He vows 'tis most absurd
With comic wit, to contradict the strain
Of tragedy, and make your sorrows vain."
But Shenstone, in his epilogue to Dodsley's "Cleone," a few years later, followed a double course. After that tragedy of anguish, the address began with,
"Well, ladies, so much for the tragic style—
And now the custom is—to make you smile."
Then came hints that had the absent husband Lefroy lived in modern times, his Cleone would have proved a different damsel to her depicted by the poet; but Shenstone adds, in his moral strain:—
"'Tis yours, ye fair, to bring those days again,
And form anew the hearts of thoughtless men.